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Closing the thread for a while because I asked that we stay on the topic of the ongoing tragedy and NOT the off-topic discussion of gun control or guns.

EDIT: Reopening the thread. Please keep the OT gun control discussion out of this thread. Discussion of the weapon used is fine, but stay away from the "civilians don't need this gun" arguments (and the like).

It would also be nice to see some discussion of how this tragedy has affected the survivors.

Now IS the time to have this discussion. The way that many of these students are dealing with this shock and grief is to demand action from our lawmakers. Stop trying to pussy foot around this topic, it’s not worth having it all the way you setup the discussion.

If you think AS is not a mature enough place to handle this then fine. Otherwise you’re just disrespecting what the survivors themselves are asking for.

... this kid who was shooting was according to witnesses was disturbed for months before this happened and barely anything was done about him, most that was done is someone and only one person reported him to the FBI for the possibility he could cause a shooting and there excuse that nothing was done is that they couldn't find him,

Forgive me for pointing the elephant in the room, but this is red herring.

Why? Simple, the boy was troubled, no doubt about it, but there was no diagnose that he was clinically insane and afaik had no criminal record, so even if there were background checks he would have bought the firearms. His life was shitty? He had a home, food on the table and money to buy toys (yeah, I am calling firearms toy not because they are not lethal, but because they fill the same niche). More than a million people in the USA are homeless and no doubt have a shittier day to day than he had, should we put them in handcuffs? So if someone calls to law enforcement and tells someone is crazy and has a gun is not reason enough to put him in jail and they do not have enough personnel to go check every neighbor just because he owns a gun and has a bad relationship with his neighbors since the USA has the highest ownership per capita of guns.

NRA members in the USA feel they are entitled to own assault weapons just because of the second amendment, which is a dandy business for the firearms manufacturers, they only way to stop this massacres is to to remove military grade weapons from civilian hands and that will never happen as long as people feel entitled to one.

Correction, that will never happen so long as corporations are the only entities able to dictate policy. Lawmakers. (specially GOP lawmakers) will always priotize the needs of their donors irrespective of how such a need polls with their constituency. We have Reagan to thank for this development in the nation's political history, but that is a subjet for another discussion.

Now IS the time to have this discussion. The way that many of these students are dealing with this shock and grief is to demand action from our lawmakers. Stop trying to pussy foot around this topic, itís not worth having it all the way you setup the discussion.

If you think AS is not a mature enough place to handle this then fine. Otherwise youíre just disrespecting what the survivors themselves are asking for.

I'm in favor of gun control.
I'm not in favor of gun control.
I have no opinion either way.
I believe it is (gun control or no gun control) but also ____.

What is there to discuss that hasn't been talked about ad nauseam already?

Look, I can totally understand people living in the middle of nowhere like Alaska. I am in favor in making the process of owning a firearm like a driving license, heck they can even take courses to have the license to posses bigger guns. But the 2nd Amendment nutjobs will do EVERYTHING to stop that from happening, drumming up the narrative of a hypothetical government that will somehow turn USA into a shithole police state, and that it will be their own duty to one day save the country. So the implementation of a process to make gun owning harder and that include medical, mental and criminal background check will NEVER happen, as long as the ordinary citizen, and defender of the 2nd amendment, will take everything from the Feds in bad faith.

I'm in favor of gun control.
I'm not in favor of gun control.
I have no opinion either way.
I believe it is (gun control or no gun control) but also ____.

What is there to discuss that hasn't been talked about ad nauseam already?

The same argument applies to mass shooting. There have been San Bernardino, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas and now Florida. Surely we had more than enough of them to discuss "ad nauseam". It baffles me that you think that it is possible to discuss the shooting itself but not the context that made it possible in the first place or the context that could prevent further tragedies.

What is there to discuss that hasn't been talked about ad nauseam already?

When a debate has made participants polarized to the level of a theological debate, then this is a work for ... science! I am serious and don't call me shirley!

Whether gun control is or not the solution to the endemic mass shootings in the 21st century usa is problem that should be attacked with sophisticated statistic analysis. Since 1996 the CDC no longer has a budget to do such research thanks to the apptly named Dickey amendment.

drumming up the narrative of a hypothetical government that will somehow turn USA into a shithole police state, and that it will be their own duty to one day save the country.

That is a very romantic narrative, on the level of entering a dungeon, killing the dragon and porking the princess. Pray that you will never see it applied in real life, because it might look pretty on paper, but attempting to overthrow a government (legitimate or otherwise) is quite often a bloody affair. Take the USA civil war for example, more than half a million died back then and they did not have the sophisticated technology available today.

Besides it is a moronic idea when you (still) have a working democracy where you can elect the government officials.

I'm in favor of gun control.
I'm not in favor of gun control.
I have no opinion either way.
I believe it is (gun control or no gun control) but also ____.

What is there to discuss that hasn't been talked about ad nauseam already?

Well, I mean all answers to any question can be translated to yes, no, and maybe so. The only interesting part is why and to what degree. That and every individual may be different. Just because I may share the same answer ultimately doesn't mean I certainly agree with them; hell no. ;p

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If it's not relevant to talk about gun control what else do you talk about?

We could talk about the FBI's screwups. Granted it shouldn't be up to them to do this, but do you think this kid would have been ignored that easily, if say, he was a Muslim? Or black? Or God forbid, the child of an illegal? What do you think Trump would be calling for in that case? Or is it that many in power believe that only white people can't be terrorists or criminals, that "boys will just be boys", but if the kid is a minority, to gun him down without a warrant because maybe, just maybe, they could have had a weapon.

It's funny how we let our government wiretap us and such to protect us from Terrorism, but what is really the difference between this act and terrorism; just due to a lack of political affiliation?

As for the rest, the NRA doesn't care about people's rights of course. Just their bottom line.

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Let us start here from Square one. No... from zero!
You do not wish to know anything. You wish only to speak.
That which you know, you ignore, because it is inconvenient.
That which you do not know, you invent.Avatar/Sig courtesy of TheEroKing
Guild Wars 2 SN: ArchonWing.9480 MyAnimeList || Reviews

Well, I mean all answers to any question can be translated to yes, no, and maybe so. The only interesting part is why and to what degree. That and every individual may be different. Just because I may share the same answer ultimately doesn't mean I certainly agree with them; hell no. ;p

What causes mass shootings is simple: people who have their head filled with bad thoughts and easy access to something that can be weaponized to kill a lot of people very quickly.

What prevents them is simple: a society that says if you're going to own it, it's going to come with a shit load of legal responsibilities and be a pita to use unless you're nowhere near a high population area. For everything else put in a strong social net and work on the rest of the problems as they happen.

What are the obstacles to this?

A government that doesn't do shit unless its corporate masters tell it to.
A large population of people who believe gun ownership is a divine right with no strings attached.
A large population of people who don't believe others are entitled to anything ever....but also believe they themselves have earned every bit of entitlement.

Again, I ask, what exactly do we discuss? Do we break down the problems with some discussion of various studies? Do we discuss the political angle, or the social ones? What about school securities? Do we really dive deep into gun control, and the pros and cons?

My point is, we've been at this for decades. We're pretty sure what causes these massacres, and we know we can't prevent every single one of them. But we can do some things, that may help, but we also keep electing people who won't do a damn thing.

So there's nothing to discuss, because nothing is going to change until people have had enough. And while I'd like to say this time will be different, I've seen this song and dance before. Maybe when the tune changes so will the dance.

If you want to see my opinion echoed just watch Jon Stewart's various speeches on the topic over the last two decades. At a certain point you just feel like you're yelling at the wind.

So there's nothing to discuss, because nothing is going to change until people have had enough. And while I'd like to say this time will be different, I've seen this song and dance before. Maybe when the tune changes so will the dance.

If you want to see my opinion echoed just watch Jon Stewart's various speeches on the topic over the last two decades. At a certain point you just feel like you're yelling at the wind.

Here is what I would raise as a counterpoint. For decades healthcare was treated much the same way! We debated, tried and failed for so long that we thought nothing would ever change with the US healthcare system. As history would have it, nothing was different until it was and we got the ACA passed (Putting aside personal qualms with the solution vs medicare as I know you prefer) it did signify a HUGE cultural shift in this country for things like universal coverage and preexisting conditions. My point? It's too easy to succumb to self defeatism.

Between Sand Hook and and this you can really see the winds of change in motion. I'm really inspired by the kids who went on that stage tonight at the town hall and guess what? Marco Rubio the A+ NRA rating senator at least gave credence to 3 compromises he was willing to make regarding background checks, high capacity magazines, and bump stocks. Is it everything? No, but it's something. We even have a march being planned late in March that may the signs of stronger support forming to battle the NRA.

Yeah, maybe change won't happen instantly but the statistics are really going towards this country being in full support of basic common sense legislation like background checks and even majority support of things like an assault weapons ban.

This is why I pushed back against this idea that gun control shouldn't be discussed because within the context of this event there is what I feel is a sense of progress in the discussion and I can see this generation to be the one that finally turns this around (if not now, in the near future).

Here in a nutshell is the core of the problem. What was it ... ¬ďAsk not what your country can do for you ¬Ė ask what you can do for your country,¬Ē. People have come to the conclusion that going to the booth to cast a vote once in a while is everything that is needed for a country to run like a well oiled machine. I do not care for what political party you went to vote, 97% of you think background checks should be the norm.

But 97% have not been going to town halls to tell your legislator "it is my way or the highway" and worse still, many keep voting for legislators that have not gone to a town hall meeting in years (like the trump lackey known as Devin Nunes). So it is not that people are helpless, they feel entitled to living in a great country without doing a great deal of work (going to a town hall, doing pacific demonstrations, etc. are work).

At the end of the day most people want about the same things, but politicians and the media have amplified the details in which people have different opinions to divide everyone when the simple truth is that people must be united in their desire to make politicians give results (just like in any other paid profession).

We are beyond gun control in the United States.
It is worthless when there are over 500,000,000 weapons and trillions of rounds of ammunition and a sizable portion of the population that would literally rise up against the government if they attempted to ban/outlaw paramilitary arms.
We here in Colorado have a magazine ban that nobody follows.
I was at a gun show in Denver at the Merchandise mart a few weekends ago and there were standard capacity magazines being sold in plain sight in front of police.
Nobody cares, because we know guns are not the problem and never have been.
Background checks are a joke and don't work (as has been illustrated in numerous mass shootings).
We here in Colorado put armed resource officers and armed police officers in the school districts that allow them. We do still have some that are Gun Free Zones and thus vulnerable to Florida style attacks.
The school shooting that prompted us here in Colorado to put armed police officers in our schools was the Arapahoe School Shooting. Only one person died (which is still sad, but its better than double-digits).

The rampage might have resulted in many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer at the school, Robinson said.